


The Cure

by triggernometry



Series: Slice of Afterlife [7]
Category: Flight Rising
Genre: Emetophobia warning?, F/M, pearlcatchers making pearls is gross sorry, some mention of fatal violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-05
Updated: 2018-12-05
Packaged: 2019-09-12 01:42:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16863844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/triggernometry/pseuds/triggernometry
Summary: Booth hasn't cured her pearl since a road agent's bullet smashed it half to hell. Funny how easily the old habits come back.





	The Cure

Booth and Haj never really did develop the habit of sharing the bedroll – outside of a few notable occasions, of course – for a variety of reasons, chief among them that Haj doesn't especially _need_ to sleep and Booth hardly does even if she needs to, because her dreams rarely let her go a full night undisturbed.

Haj hasn't remarked on it yet, either because he hasn't noticed or because he's smarter than she gives him credit for. _She's_ noticed that she's been sleeping a touch easier since the boy entered the picture, at least. His sleep is remarkably regular: asleep shortly after sundown, awake only once the sun is up high enough to light the miasma ablaze along the horizon. Her own sleeping patterns increasingly mirror his, and she wakes – if not exactly _rested_ , less tired certainly.

It's rarer now for the echoes of long-dead voices to wake her up before sunrise; rather, it's usually the shift in the boy's breathing from deep and slow to lighter and quicker that brings her round. Booth's always got one ear trained toward the boy; half her thoughts are always pointed in his direction, watching, assessing. Funny how easily the old habits come back.

She can just about make out the boy's shape on the bedroll beside her, breathing slow and deep, fast asleep. _The boy._ They'd decided to tentatively call him Amos the other day – the only name neither of them had rejected out of hand after rattling off a number of potential options from both sides. She still thinks of him as _the boy_ and calls him only haltingly by the name. Naming him makes him more definite, somehow. It makes him something real and thus something dangerous: something real is easier to lose.

Funny how easily the old habits come back.

It's dark in the scrap-tent, aside from the faint, almost-nothing glow of some lichen and the inside of a firebug Haj used to paint a crude approximation of stars on the ceiling of the scrap-tent, because it made – _Amos –_ laugh with delight to see the glow spread across the old canvas like magic.

Booth's the only one of them that's seen stars. She didn't have the heart to tell Haj his interpretation is a little off, notably in that stars so rarely have faces.

Haj's settled somewhere on the other side of the scrap-tent, invisible in the gloom, on a chair he found on the Road and triumphantly carried home one day like a conquering hero returning with the spoils of war. He usually dozes off in it for a few hours at least each night. Booth waits until the absence of sound from the chair tells her he's out before she slips quietly from under the blanket and into the stale night air outside of the scrap-tent.

The miasma overhead is only very faintly aglow. The day was dark even before sunset, gloomy with the bruise of storm clouds along the horizon. The season is changing over, threatening black blizzards and the start of the monsoon.

Booth turns her gaze from the green-black haze of the sky and crosses to the trunk she'd dragged out here during the day under the pretense of cleaning: the old steamer she'd gone back to the wreckage of her old life to collect. She opens the trunk and takes a deep breath. She feels around until her fingers find the box of wax candles, shakes one out and puts it in her pocket. Then she's still a minute, staring down into the open mouth of the steamer.

There's not enough light to see inside of it, but she can feel the weight of the pearl against the darkness just fine. She reaches inside without the need to grope blindly, just hooks her claws into the rough burlap of the sack holding the pearl and hauls it out. She hefts it in her arms a minute, feeling the impossible weight of it, before heading for the farthest edge of the stone and driftwood circle around the camp.

She drops the sack on the ground and seats herself in front of it with her back to the scrap-tent. The soft soil makes a decent enough holder for the candle; she just presses the butt end of it into the dirt until it stays upright. She pulls a lighter from her pocket and gives it a flick. It sputters once and then catches, and she lights the candlewick before clicking the lighter shut and stowing it away again.

She stares at the flame a while before letting her eye slide over to the burlap sack. She finds, more than anything, that she does not want to open it.

She leans forward, unties the rough rope knot, and opens the sack. She doesn't let herself think about it, doesn't hesitate, just reaches inside and draws the pearl out. She sets it on the ground in front of her, just between her folded legs and the wadded-up sack.

The pearl's seen better days, to be sure. The surface is pocked and chipped, scarred deep with a crack near splitting the middle in two from the bullet hole that formed it.

The layers of cured ichor are exposed along the crack's inner surface. She remembers waking up to the impatient tug of a bonepicker's beak in her flesh and briefly being able to register only the gouged surface of the pearl that'd come to a rest beside her head, close enough to make the crack look like a yawning chasm she could just tip forward and fall right into.

The bullet had shattered before it could burrow all the way through the pearl. She remembers thinking, at the time, that it might as well have been the other way round. The new surface – the layer she'd put on just that day, to commemorate what they called _the fresh start down south_ – was chipped and cleaved, webbed with fractures spreading from the impact of the shot.

She runs her fingers over the fractured surface. The uneven layers of pearl are rough, almost sharp. She's known pearlcatchers with damaged pearls before – everyone back home did. Common knowledge back home holds you can't get rid of a damaged pearl, assuming any parts of the original structure remain. You're supposed to fill in the cracks, suture the splits, renew it with whatever keeps you going after the damage.

Booth didn't plan on having much after killing Daur, so she'd just thrown it in the sack and let it be. The reflex to cure a pearl is all instinct, so of course she's had ichor between then and now. When that'd happened she'd just spit it out into the dirt, kicked it over with dust, left it out in the Wasteland somewhere she'd never think to go back to.

That's what she used to do, anyway.  

She's been feeling the press of ichor in her chest again lately. It started up right around the time Lil Cuss' egg didn't just give up like the rest of the clutch. Somehow, she just hasn't found the time to slip away and spit it out somewhere yet.

Somehow.

She slips a hand under the layers of clothing and rubs the skin of her chest, feeling the weight of pooled memories waiting behind the breastbone. She doesn't look away from the pearl on the ground in front of her.

The convulsion almost – not quite – takes her by surprise. The ichor bubbles from her throat and manages to stick to itself right up until it hits the back of her teeth, then the surface tension cracks and black seeps between her teeth and over her lips. The ichor stings her gums, makes the skin of her mouth itch something fierce. It's full of fear and pain and the ache of wounds long overdue to close, heavy with the terrible weight of the boy's egg in her arms the night she carried it back to camp.

She leans forward and lets gravity carry it onto the surface of the pearl.

The ichor hits the bullet hole first, almost disappearing into it before it fills it up and overflows, spreading up and out along the crack and chasing itself through the fractured surface. Soon the old bone-white cure is half disappeared under fresh ichor that shines void-black in the dim candlelight.

The first wave of ichor is over. She's not sure when the next one will hit – if there even _is_ one. She quickly spreads the burlap sack out over the ground and delicately picks the pearl up by the parts that aren't coated in black yet, sets it on the burlap and out of the dirt.

Dirt makes the cure dry slower, and she's already got the damp poxhound mouth of the Wasteland air to contend with. Pearls cured faster back home, where the air is drier; out here, in this humidity, the cure takes longer to set.

She watches the ichor spread languidly across the bone-white of the pearl, watches it settle into place and begin to harden. The surface is smooth, mirror-like, but the light from the candle seems only to fall into it and disappear.

The next wave is less of a surprise. It doesn't burn her skin this time and flows more easily over her teeth. The taste is a little bitter, a little burnt around the edges, smoky with the fear and fury that propelled her over the edge of Big Swoller with every intention of ripping a Wasteland wanderer limb from limb with her bare hands if it meant keeping Amos and Haj even one more day.  
  
She feels the weight of a hand on her shoulder and recoils so fast she nearly chokes.

“Booth?”

It's Haj. Of course it's Haj. She spits ichor out onto the pearl with an ugly _splat_ and snaps her head around to look up at him. He's half crouched just a hair behind her, the concern writ large on his face half-lit by the candlelight.

“What is – is that _blood?_ Are you _hurt?”_

The genuine concern in his voice is strangely endearing. The question is almost outlandishly innocent coming from Haj, of all people – only _children_ mistake pearl ichor for _blood_. She snorts and feels some remnant of ichor catch in her throat. She coughs and shakes her head.

“ _No,_ I'm not _hurt,”_ she says, possibly with more venom than Haj really deserves. He looks relieved, anyway, if no less bewildered.

“Then _what_ in--” His eyes connect with the pearl in front of her and he breaks off, staring in obvious surprise. “ _Oh._ ”

_That_ rankles. It shouldn't, but it does. Some pearlcatchers back home were touchier about their pearl being seen before it was set – Booth'd never really cared who saw her pearl or when, had even shared the process with a few family members back home from time to time. When her girl had been old enough, she'd been curious as anything to watch Booth cure her pearl. Booth hadn't minded that either, even if she never quite understood the mystique of the event personally.  
  
Somewhere between here and then, she's gotten touchier about the process, apparently. She feels suddenly exposed – or maybe caught, in a way. Caught doing something she shouldn't, or at least something she shouldn't _want_ to be doing.  
  
“I don't need an _audience_ ,” she snaps. The ichor makes her throat feel hot and dry, makes her voice a rough, half-strangled rasp. Haj starts as if stung, breaks his wide-eyed stare away from the pearl and looks at Booth. At least he has the decency to look somewhat embarrassed, she'll give him that. He gives her a quick nod and withdraws his hand from her shoulder, straightening up.

She sighs. Some of the tension in her shoulders leaks out and gravity suddenly feels much stronger than it did a moment ago.

“I'm sorry,” she says softly.

Haj puts his hands up in a placating gesture. “No, no,” he says quickly. “Don't gotta be. Private time, I gotcha.” He moves to start back toward the scrap-tent.

“Haj.” She doesn't raise her voice to span the growing distance between them; she knows he could hear her whisper out here in the still night air. He stops, but doesn't turn around. “Sit with me.”

Haj turns very slowly. Her own body's blocking out much of the candlelight from this angle; she can't really make out his face in the gloom.

“You sure?” He sounds unexpectedly concerned. “I don't, I mean, I ain't know a thing about” – she can just about see him gesture toward the pearl – “ _y'know_ , an' I don't wanna mess it up or nothin'--”

“Sit with me,” she says again, then adds, softer: “Please.”

He shuffles back to her with slow, careful steps. She resists the urge to laugh; he looks almost exactly like a spooked fangar trying to sneak past an especially harrowing leaf. He hovers uncertainly for a bit, eyes flicking from the pearl to her and back again, until she reaches out for his hand and guides him to sit down next to her. He follows her lead without resistance, and stares at her pearl for a good while without speaking.

“Go on,” she says once she figures the silence has dragged on long enough. From the corner of her eye, she can see Haj start a bit, as if coming-to after dozing off. “Ask your questions.”

Haj shifts in place, fidgeting a little.

“Is it true you can get ghosts in those things?”

Booth has to actually turn her head to look at him. That is _not_ the question she expects from Haj – though, now he's said it, she's not sure how she could have ever expected anything else.

“What?”

“I knew this gal – a pearlcatcher, right – she said y'all can get ghosts inside'a pearls, like, if a pearlcatcher dies or somethin' they can haunt their own pearl, or maybe it was somebody else's pearl – I forget just now, an' it was kinda confusin' anyway, she was a real rambly type.” Haj rubs at the side of his neck with one hand, looking increasingly regretful of his decisions leading up to this moment.

Booth shrugs. “It's possible, I guess.”

Haj's eyes go wide. “What, really?”

“I said _possible.”_

“Huh.” Haj turns his gaze back to her pearl, and something about his expression tells her he fully expects a ghost to fly out of it at any minute.

“That all?”

“Huh?” Haj glances up at her again. “Oh. Uh. I guess – what's it taste like? The black stuff?”

“Depends on what's inside it,” Booth says.

“What, like bad thoughts taste bad an' good ones're sweet?” Haj gives a self-conscious laugh, like he's not sure if he's saying something that sounds ridiculous or not.

“More or less,” she says.

Haj raises his eyebrows and looks thoughtful a minute. He nods. He goes back to staring at the slow swirl of void-black ichor setting up on the pearl's surface. Booth watches him. When his face gets a little more serious, she knows he's found the question he _wants_ to ask.

“I ain't ever really seen it up close.” Haj pauses thoughtfully. “'cept for that one time you walloped that fella with it.”  
  
Booth snorts at the memory. They'd been on the move then, before the Holtswell job. Some fool had tried his hand at holding them up while their guard was down. Booth'd put on her best tearful widow face while Haj did his damnedest not to laugh and spoil the play; she managed to wrap the burlap sack around her fist and hit the agent so hard in the head his neck broke clean and left his head flopping over backwards like a grotesque flesh hood.

Haj had laughed about that incident for _days._

“You ain't never cured it before,” he says carefully. “Leastwise, not ever I've seen.”

“No,” she agrees, “I haven't. Not since before you.”

“Why d'you wanna fix it now?” Haj's looking at her now, not quite head-on but direct enough to make her look away first.

She lets her gaze focus on some nothing point in the boundary of the candlelight meeting the darkness around them. She tries to imagine saying the answer to that question out loud, and figures holding a hot coal in her mouth without spitting it out would be easier. She's quiet long enough that she can see Haj turn his head to look back at the pearl from the corner of her eye. She lets loose a long breath and goes for the simple answer, the coward's answer.

“Guess it was time.”


End file.
